Welcome back, baseball. Kinston barely had a chance to miss you this time around.
Nine days after the Down East Wood Ducks played their last game in historic Grainger Stadium, Kinston’s baseball movers and shakers reassembled at the 76-year-old ballpark to announce that professional baseball would return in 2025.
Kinston will get a team in the independent Frontier League, an unaffiliated league partnered with Major League Baseball. That means that, unlike teams in Single-A, Double-A or Triple-A, there’s no MLB parent club to provide players. Instead, any of the 30 MLB teams can choose to provide or promote a player from the roster.
Eight former Frontier League players made the big leagues in 2024, most notably Texas Rangers starter Kumar Rocker, a 2022 Tri-City ValleyCat.
“That’s what our baseball mission is,” said Frontier League commissioner Steve Tashler. “On the player side, it’s to give players the opportunity to showcase themselves to all the organizations and see which one is the best fit as they pursue their dream. On the business and community side, our goal is to be a long-term, solid community partner.”
The league is growing rapidly. 2024 was the third straight year the Frontier League has broken its league-wide attendance record, and every Frontier League team saw its attendance increase from the previous season. Kinston is one of two new teams that will join the league in 2025, joined by Mississippi. The two new additions bring the league’s total number of teams to 18.
“It is professional baseball,” emphasized Cameron McRae, who will be the primary owner of the new Frontier League team.
McRae has been part of the ownership group for Kinston teams since the mid-1990s.
“Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in,” he joked about his return to the owner’s suite at Grainger.
The announcement continues Kinston’s long relationship with pro baseball. Despite being one of the smallest communities in the minor leagues, the city has fought to keep baseball playing there since its first team in 1908.
The Kinston Eagles were home to future Hall of Fame catcher Rick Ferrell in the 1920s. However, the Great Depression caused the first gap in the city’s baseball history. The Eagles then returned in 1934, before two more brief breaks in the mid-to-late 1950s.
The Eagles joined the Carolina League in 1962. Led by big-leaguers-to-be Steve Blass and Gene Michael, they won the league championship in their first season. That run continued until the mid-1970s, through affiliations with the Pirates, Yankees and Expos. It saw Charlie “King Kong” Keller, a future Yankees slugger; Leo Mazzone, best known as pitching coach for the great Braves teams of the 1990s; Ron Guidry, the 1978 Cy Young winner with the Yankees, and future NFL quarterback Jay Schroeder.
After another three-year absence, the Eagles returned in 1978 and partnered with first the Blue Jays and, later, Cleveland. Hall of Famers Fred McGriff and Jim Thome wore Kinston uniforms, as did future All-Stars Manny Ramirez, Albert Belle, Charles Nagy and CC Sabathia.
Baseball went dark in Kinston in 2012, until the Wood Ducks arrived in 2017 as a Texas Rangers affiliate. The team was sold in 2023 and announced plans to move to Spartanburg, S.C. following the 2024 season. That threatened to be the end of the line for Kinston’s relationship with professional baseball. The minor leagues have contracted in recent years. So, opportunities for such a small community to try to support a team have dwindled.
“I would like to extend my gratitude to the Down East Wood Ducks for being here,” said Kinston mayor Don Hardy. “Thank you for bringing such a vibrant love of baseball to our city over the past eight years, during which we’ve enjoyed seven incredible seasons of baseball here. Your presence has truly energized Kinston, creating unforgettable memories for fans and families.”
Despite the kind words, the community still harbored hard feelings toward the Wood Ducks for leaving.
“We really hate to see them go,” said Lenoir County chairperson Linda Rouse Sutton. “We hope they will enjoy their new environment and the folks there will be as good to them as we were.”
The Frontier League team will be known as the Down East Bird Dawgs, and McRae unveiled two logos. One of them shows a musclebound dog getting ready to swing a bat. The other has the dog holding what appears to be a wood duck in its mouth.
